Machado de Assis: A Literary Life

K. David Jackson

Abstract

This book is an interpretation of J.M. Machado de Assis, the Brazilian writer, and his fictional world. The central idea is that Machado put before us the theater of the world of Rio de Janeiro during Brazil’s nineteenth-century empire. His writing exemplifies hybridity and metaliterary play in a blending of diverse sources that emanated from his exceptionally wide reading and quotation from a world library. His hybrid style produces creative qualities that the modernist novel of the twentieth century championed. By his invention of character–narrators to replace himself as author, his selecti ... More

This book is an interpretation of J.M. Machado de Assis, the Brazilian writer, and his fictional world. The central idea is that Machado put before us the theater of the world of Rio de Janeiro during Brazil’s nineteenth-century empire. His writing exemplifies hybridity and metaliterary play in a blending of diverse sources that emanated from his exceptionally wide reading and quotation from a world library. His hybrid style produces creative qualities that the modernist novel of the twentieth century championed. By his invention of character–narrators to replace himself as author, his selective quotation from a universal library, manipulation of retrospective narrative frames, and ample application of satire and comedy, Machado occupies a deserved place as an inventor of the modernist novel and as a wry, wise observer of humanity.

Part Five Conclusion

End Matter

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